


Realignment

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:50:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam falls off a cliff. It's the beginning of a weird night. s1 first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Realignment

  
The wind is singing in Sam’s ears, but he can still hear Dean’s grunt of effort as he hauls him up a few more rough, agonizing inches of cliff. Sam’s right hand is cramped around Dean’s wrist, his left oozing blood onto the sharp jut of rock it’s clutching, and the world is swimming all around him, granite flecked with dazzling mica, yellowish grass clinging thinly in cracks and slipping under his scrabbling toes, dizzying tilt of sky above and magnetic pull of scree and boulders below. The only steady point is Dean’s face, taut with effort, looking down at him. His eyes are locked on Sam’s, fierce and panicked and strong as his bruising grip.

Sam’s foot finds a narrow ledge; he pushes upwards, and with a final desperate twist and a tug from Dean that feels like it’s going to tear his arm off he scrapes over the cliff edge and collapses backwards, feet still dangling over empty space, Dean’s arm across his chest, Dean’s heart pounding against his back.

They lie there for a few minutes, Dean sprawled on pebbles and moss, Sam half on top of him, both breathing in gasps, sweat chilling in the breeze. “Jesus, Sam,” says Dean finally, “don’t fall over cliffs.”

He shoves at Sam and Sam sits up. Pain rips through his shoulder, something sickly askew. There’s new sweat prickling out on his face, and the sky swings one last, lurching half circle, as though he were still dangling over the boulders. Sheesh, he really wrenched it. Dean’s right, falling off a cliff was a terrible idea.

Dean’s eyeing him sharply. He probably looks pale, or green. He feels green. “You okay?” Dean says.

“Is it dead?” Sam asks in turn. First things first.

Dean spares a cursory glance over the edge, “Looks dead to me,” he says. “Wait.” He picks up a chunk of loose rock and tosses it over, and it hits something with a distant, meaty thunk. “Yup, dead,” says Dean, pleased. “Holy shit, that thing is ugly. Too bad we’re not getting down there to burn it. Now, gravity boy. Lemme look at your hand. You’re bleeding.”

“Just scraped,” says Sam, going for casual, but ending on a gasp as he tries to lean forward. “Think you dislocated my shoulder, though, Dean. Fuck.”

“Yeah, I definitely owe you an apology for that. Should have let you dash yourself to grisly pieces right next to Bigfoot.” Dean’s voice is heavy with sarcasm, his hands sure and gentle, probing carefully around the tearing wrongness in Sam’s shoulder. Sam lets his head tilt forward, so his nose is brushing the soft flannel of Dean’s shirt. It smells of detergent and drying sweat and gun oil. Olfactory anesthetic.

“It wasn’t Bigfoot,” he says into the shirt, “Bigfoot doesn’t exist. It was just a Woodwose.”

“Yeah, yeah, if you want to get technical,” says Dean, “Bigfoot sounds cooler. It’s dislocated, all right,” he adds. He sits back on his heels, looking around. The light is orange and dramatic, dazzling Sam’s eyes, casting sharp shadows behind the wiry weeds, bringing out the gold highlights in Dean’s hair and silhouetting his shoulders in black against the molten sky. He looks huge and significant, an inescapable presence between Sam and the world like when Sam was small, and at the same time utterly, exasperatingly familiar. He’s turning his head to check the angle of the sun, then looking back at Sam, frowning. Weighing him against the sunset.

“Guess we’re staying the night, then,” he announces to the pebbles and the pines and the wildlife and maybe Sam. Sam feels nauseous and unconsulted. Dean strides off, comes back with their pack, fishes around in it. The first aid kit, Sam thinks. Dean’s getting the first aid kit. Pills. But Dean’s holding out a flat bottle instead. “Get drinking,” he says.

“That’s whisky,” says Sam, staring at it. It’s whisky. “Don’t we have anything more pharmaceutical?”

“Whisky’s what we got. Not good enough for you?”

“We carry alcohol on hikes but not painkillers?”

“Priorities,” says Dean. “Painkillers are only useful for killing pain. Alcohol applies in all kinds of situations.” Sam goes on staring at him. Dean sighs. “We’re out, okay? Haven’t had a chance to stock up on the good stuff lately. Whisky will do the trick. All you need is some muscle relaxant and a bit of a buzz.”

“You want me to sit on a cliff-top and get drunk,” says Sam accusingly. Dean’s always saving him or trying to kill him. It’s annoying.

“Guess we should get you back a ways,” Dean allows, “Before you go throwing yourself after your friend there again, so’s you can exchange hair tips or do Sasquatch stuff or whatever. I think it had actual nests in its fur. If it wasn’t so dead, you could learn a lot from it.”

“Fuck you,” Sam mutters, which isn’t his greatest comeback of all time, but Dean is pulling him to his feet and dragging his good arm over his shoulders and walking him the hundred yards to the nearest clump of pine, and Sam needs his concentration to place his sneakers just so in the tiny clearings of scrubby blueberry bushes, to watch the sun fire the crystal of Dean’s watch, and to not throw up.

Dean deposits Sam on a thick sheet of moss, head propped on a tree root, and goes back for the pack. The root is digging into Sam’s skull, and the damp from the moss is soaking insidiously into his clothes, but it’s soft and stable. Dean reappears, sets the bottle by Sam’s good hand. “Go on,” he says, “work on the whisky. I’m going to get some wood, start a fire.”

Sam takes a cautious, obedient sip, then knocks back a proper slug, then another. The burnish of sunlight has moved to the very tops of the pines, and it fades as he watches. Dean is scraping a patch of ground clear of moss, building a circle of stones like a fucking boy scout, then moving about in search of twigs and dry branches. Every now and then he glares in Sam’s direction, and Sam takes another pull at the bottle. His surroundings are beginning to spin again, but it’s not alarming now. It’s like the world is tilting its planes of moss to give him a better view of the sparks flying up, firelight catching on Dean’s amulet, in his eyes, a bat flitting in jerky ellipses against the gunmetal sky. His shoulder still hurts, the world still thrown out of alignment on the twist of pain, but Dean’s hands are right over there, blunt and reliable and competent, feeding twigs to the flames. They’ll fix it.

“You drunk yet, Sammy?” Dean calls. Sam nods sluggishly. He probably is. When he starts to think about Dean’s hands it usually means he’s drunk. “Probably,” he says. Dean comes over and kneels beside him, turns Sam’s chin to look assessingly into his eyes. Sam blinks at him. Dean snorts. “Yeah, you’ll do,” he says. “This’ll hurt like a bitch, mind, but it’s quick.”

“OK,” says Sam. It hurts like a bitch already. Dean takes his head off the tree root so he’s flat on his back, puts his good arm straight at his side, then the bad arm. “Fuck,” says Sam.

“You know,” says Dean conversationally, still busy arranging Sam’s limbs like he’s some fucking mannequin, “This probably hurts me as much as it hurts you. Like, literally. You’re not the only one that’s sore here. My arm totally had to save your arm’s ass.”

“Arms don’t have asses,” says Sam. The stars are coming out, arranging themselves in patterns. He admires them for a moment, then drags his mind back to the matter at hand. Anatomy is important, especially when Dean is about to practically operate on him. “Wait, yours isn’t dislocated, too, is it?” he adds suspiciously. That would be just like Dean, to go fixing his dislocated shoulder with his shoulder dislocated.

“What, my ass?” says Dean, “I do not have a dislocated ass. Relax. Trust your big brother.” He braces his knee against Sam’s left side and curls Sam’s right hand into a fist, then bends the arm briskly at the elbow, first up towards his shoulder, then over his chest, then out, palm up, like he’s some cardboard cut-out of a crossing guard. “Shit,” hisses Sam, trying to arch off the ground, whiting out on the pain. Dean starts to repeat the maneuver Then there’s an audible click, and the pain drops off so precipitously it’s disorienting. Sam blinks the sweat out of his eyes. “Huh,” he says cautiously.

“Better?” says Dean. He’s feeling around the joint again. The pressure hurts, the muscle is plenty sore, but the red-hot pain and the sick sense of wrongness are gone. “Yeah,” says Sam, “Thanks,” and sits up. The clearing spins like a top. He’s still drunk.

“Easy,” says Dean. He must’ve dug their spare t-shirts out of the pack; he’s hacking up one – Sam’s, probably -- with a knife. He eases Sam out of his button-down, immobilizes the shoulder with mummy-like strips of t-shirt, and fixes a sling for the arm with the other shirt. His fingers brush past the nape of Sam’s neck and his collarbone as he works, and Sam stares at his face through a gold haze of firelight and whisky. His nerves are thrumming with the familiar closeness of Dean and the abrupt distance of pain. Dean finishes, buttons Sam’s shirt on again, gives his chest a brisk pat, and helps him to his feet. Sam stays upright, only swaying a little.

He staggers off into the trees to take a piss, awkward with only his left hand, but manageable, and comes back to lie down by the fire and think long, drunken thoughts. Dean’s sitting propped against a tree, legs stretched out, eating peanut M&M’s. He tosses a handful onto Sam’s chest and Sam eats them one by one, letting the candy shell melt and the chocolate dissolve, then chewing the peanut when it’s a bit soggy but still chocolaty. It’s a science, or maybe more of an art. No, a science. He gets through three before Dean makes a low noise of ultimate exasperation and snatches back the remainder of the handful, cramming them into his own mouth all at once and crunching noisily. His cheeks distend like a chipmunk’s. Sam stares at him from the ground, fixated by annoyance and odd angles. “Hey,” he says, “Those were mine.”

“Only because I gave them to you,” says Dean. Sam lunges after the bag, but he’s not Olympic lunge material right now, what with the whisky and the mummy shoulder. Dean pushes him back down, laughing. Sam can’t catch his breath. The cliff is an hour ago and a hundred yards off in the dark, but Sam’s still swinging dizzily from the focal point of Dean’s face. He closes his free hand around Dean’s wrist, light and experimental. Dean stops laughing. Sam slides his palm up Dean’s arm, curls it against his shoulder, then grabs a fistful of cloth and tugs Dean down. Dean’s eyes widen, but his lips against Sam’s are firm and pliant and he doesn’t pull away.

Sam’s heart is thumping crazily; he’s doing this and he’s still not sure he’s doing it. He’s drunk, but he’s not that drunk. Dean’s face is closer than he’s ever seen it, a half-lit alien landscape, shockingly familiar. Sam shifts his arm awkwardly across Dean’s shoulder and opens his mouth against his. The kiss tastes of chocolate and cheap candy shells and the afterbite of whisky, and they’re swapping sodden crumbs of peanut as their tongues meet and stroke. It’s a little gross.

Dean gives a small grunt – belated surprise or aborted objection or “Dude, that’s way too far to go to steal my candy,” Sam’s not sure – but then Dean’s hands are on either side of his face and Dean’s weight is pressing him into the moss and this time it’s Dean kissing him, rough and desperate, bruising Sam’s lips against his teeth. Sam can feel Dean’s cock stiffening, nudging his hip through both their jeans.

“Don’t do that again, Sammy, you’ve gotta not do that again, you hearing me?” Dean is saying, his voice rough, and Sam says “Okay,” raggedly, even though he’s not a hundred percent sure if Dean is talking about Sam kissing him, or letting Dean kiss him back, or falling over cliffs. Probably mostly the cliff thing. Dean’s leaning in again, attacking his mouth, the corner of his jaw, his neck, sucking a hot mark right over his pulse point.

“Dean,” Sam says, and Dean breaks off. Dean’s going to call a halt here. Or Sam should. He really, really should. Instead he fumbles at Dean’s waist with his awkward left hand, still scraped from the cliff, gets his hand into Dean’s boxers, and squeezes it around Dean’s dick, hot and thick and irrefutable. Dean freezes, but it’s Sam who makes a noise, a helpless, choked moan.

“Fuck. Yeah, okay, okay,” says Dean, like he’s talking to himself, and begins to work on Sam’s belt. And suddenly Sam is seeing Jess’s hands, smooth and nimble and always defter with his clothes than he was himself. Past and present turn inside out; he’s not sure which one he’s betraying. Dean’s pushing Sam’s jeans down now, pressing kisses on his belly, mouthing around the hard ache of Sam’s cock, hands clutching Sam’s hips like he’s still afraid Sam will fall. But they’re safe. Palo Alto, the burnt out apartment, they’re way off on the other side of the country, drawn small like the toy cities on old maps. The space in between stretches out endlessly, dark and vague, Dad busy in it somewhere, attention safely on other things. Even the Impala is out of this, beetle-tiny in a parking lot miles below.

Dean’s mouth moves, dragging wetly up Sam’s shaft, lowering round the head. And it’s good, it’s fucking good. Sam’s mewling, pushing into Dean’s mouth and urging Dean’s head further down before he can think. But Dean’s too far off, not enough of him. If Sam’s wagering the toy city and the matchbox car, then he wants it all. Wants Dean in it, in him, all the way, not getting Sam off, holding himself back. He tugs at Dean’s head and Dean comes off him with an obscene pop, a loop of spit still arcing from his mouth to Sam’s dick. Sam draws Dean’s hand off his hip and drags it down, past his balls, over his hole. Dean makes a breathy sound, and oh yeah, Dean may be a master of not wanting things, not right out in the open where Sam can see it, but he wants this. He holds Sam’s gaze, eyes hot and uncertain. “Dean,” says Sam, “please,” and knows he’s got him.

“That what you need, Sammy?” Dean says, his voice gone dark, indulgent and predatory, “Need me to fuck you?” Sam nods, too turned on to speak. Not just his want, but Dean’s, his for the taking. That thought scalds through him, like the molten heat of it should light up the clearing, topple the crackling trees like matchsticks.

Dean scrambles to his feet, abrupt and ungraceful for once, jeans hanging open. He’s already undoing his shirt with one hand while he roots through the pack with the other. He comes back, shucking shoes and jeans on the way, and kneels down naked next to Sam, a tube of cheap vaseline lip balm in his hand. The firelight catches on the strong planes of his chest and belly, the hard jut of his cock, the sheen of sweat on his throat shimmering with the rapid beat of his pulse.

“You done this before?” he asks, businesslike, and Sam says, “Yeah.” He doesn’t elaborate. Brady’s not something he wants to talk about. Dean nods. Sam doesn’t have to ask the same. He can remember Dean at twenty. The girls, the guys. The smoldering in Sam’s gut that he’d called envy, never jealousy. He’s always been a master of shades of meaning. It’s remarkable, the stuff Sam’s learned from lying to himself.

Dean pulls off Sam’s shoes, tugs his jeans and boxers the rest of the way off, Sam kicking ludicrously to help him. Sam thinks he must look ridiculous, more than anything, with his stiff, red dick and pale, hairy legs and the flannel shirt he’s still wearing, empty sleeve limp where his right arm is bound across his chest. That’s going to be awkward. But Dean’s not laughing. He unbuttons the shirt for the second time that night and pushes it aside, brushes his hand over Sam’s exposed nipple, runs it along the edge of the wrapping on his injured shoulder. Then his lips are on Sam’s chest, mouthing at the edge of the cloth. Sam tries to sit up, to get at Dean in turn, but Dean pushes his good shoulder flat again. The corner of his mouth lifts, classic, maddening, knows-best Dean.

“No vigorous workouts for a few days, remember?” he says. “Gonna have to lie back and think of Bigfoot for this one,” and he presses his mouth to the side of Sam’s neck, right by the knot of the sling, then moves up to breathe hotly into his ear. “Bet it had lice,” he whispers, and Sam snorts a laugh, then shivers and whimpers as Dean licks at the delicate skin behind his earlobe. Then Dean’s mouth moves lower and lower, tickling and teasing down the center of his chest, the curve of bone at his hip, till he’s between Sam’s thighs, hooking Sam’s knee over his shoulder while he works the first warm, slick finger in.

It should be the strangest thing, his brother crooking a finger up his ass, but it’s not. It’s just Dean, close in, knowing what he’s doing, the limits of trust light years further out than this. Dean’s staring at his own hand, hypnotized, and it’s that look, as much as the burn and the promise of what Dean’s doing, that’s making Sam’s heart jump against his chest. They’re caught in the circle of firelight, in a rhythm of dragged breaths. Dean adds a second finger, then a third, catching expertly over Sam’s prostate, and Sam lets his head fall back with a moan, shifting his hips. “That’s it,” says Dean, encouraging big brother voice edged with lust. Then his fingers are pulling out and he moves up, propped on his elbows, looking seriously into Sam’s eyes. “Ready?” he asks, and it’s last chance, are you sure, it’s all right. Sam pulls him down in a hard kiss, yes, yes, yes, while Dean begins to push in.

The circle of firelight shrinks, condenses into Dean, moving over him and into him. Dean’s endlessly careful, inch by inch, thumb stroking over Sam’s nipple, eyes on his face, a gauging look, making sure he’s OK. The look Sam’s been relying on and fighting off his whole life. Sam groans, because right now it’s just fucking frustrating, and he wraps his legs around Dean and lifts so Dean slides all the way in, strangeness and burn and the first sharp sparks of pleasure. This time the noise Sam makes has nothing to do with frustration, and Dean’s expression is something Sam’s never seen before, shocked and tender and ferociously turned on. He bends down and nips at Sam’s throat, says “Sam,” quietly -- fact, vow, statement of intent-- and starts to move.

If Sam opens his eyes there won’t be a ceiling, no blood, no Jess. Just the huge innocent darkness falling off on all sides of them, treetops and stars and Dean’s face. He scrunches them shut instead, concentrates on the earth at his back and on Dean driving into him, his grunts and the smell of his sweat and his breath panting hot against Sam’s neck. He’s clutching Sam hard, sharp crescents of pain from his nails punctuating the slow build of pleasure. Sam’s shoulder is starting to ache fiercely, too, for all that Dean’s holding himself carefully away from it, but it’s good, a counterpoint of intensity. He gropes for his dick, hot and hard and leaking across his stomach, opens his eyes deliberately into Dean’s while he begins to jack himself. Second time today he’s had Dean’s eyes on him like that, balanced over sheer fall. Dean slows, pauses, watching Sam’s face, his own breath hitching, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips when Sam groans, pulling himself closer and closer to the edge. Then gravity realigns, and it’s Dean, Dean, Dean. Sam arches off the ground and comes, Dean pressing into him, not thrusting, holding Sam steady while he shudders. Then Dean starts to move again, quick powerful shoves, hand tethering Sam’s wrist, belly slick with Sam’s come, lips hovering over the hollow of Sam’s throat while he fucks him into the solid ground. He comes shouting Sam’s name, slumps down across Sam’s chest. For a moment they’re both stuck there, like the mountain holding them up has fallen on them.

Then Dean pulls out, rolls over, and stands up. He clears his throat like he’s about to speak, but he only swipes his hand over his face and turns away without saying anything, groping in the pine needles for his jeans. God knows Sam’s not coming up with the right line either. He flashes back to Dean reading to him, long ago, he must have been three or four, some picture book, _What Do You Say, Dear?_ It had the correct phrase for when you’d crashed your airplane into someone’s living room, or missed the princess’s remarks at her ball. He’d thought it was hilarious back then, made Dean read it over and over, giggled every time. But it lacked the formula for when you’d grown up and fallen over a cliff and gotten the brother who’d read it to you to fuck you.

Dean pulls on his clothes and moves off, tosses more wood on the fire, and rummages in the pack again, pulling out their tattered thermal blanket and a canteen. Sam wipes off clumsily with his boxers, manages to get back into his jeans, and fumbles at the buttons of his shirt. When he looks up Dean’s standing in front of him, unreadable. Sam blurts out the first thing that comes to his head.

“We had lip balm, but not painkillers?”

“Priorities,” Dean repeats, unsmiling, “We pack the multipurpose stuff.” He drops the canteen by Sam, tips a couple of Advil into his hand. “Drink some water,” he orders, “You’re gonna feel like crap in the morning.” Sam swallows the pills and any further words.

Dean lies down facing out into the darkness, his back to Sam, holding Sam’s edge of the blanket over his shoulder without turning. His breathing is careful and shallow for a while, then gradually steadies and deepens. Sam’s drifting off himself when Dean suddenly jerks all over, with a muffled, startled cry. Sam knows those moments, the sudden swoop and catch on the edge of sleep. He nudges his shoulder against Dean’s spine and Dean settles again. Sam lies listening to the faint crackle of the fire and Dean’s small shifts and snuffles as he sleeps. His mind tries to grapple with the night, his tumble over the cliff, Dean fixing his shoulder, coming with Dean’s dick in him. One moment the whole thing seems huge and solid, something that’s always been there, like the mountain. The next moment it turns slippery and fragile, tilting out of his grasp, like Jess’s great-grandmother’s platter he’d broken, doing the Thanksgiving dishes. Sam does these things. Irreparable things.

**********************

  
Sam doesn’t feel so bad, actually, when he wakes up. His shoulder is sore and sleeping on the ground hasn’t done much for it, but his head doesn’t ache, and he’s starving rather than nauseated. The sky is a fragile blue, sunlight still early and cool. Sam sits up. There’s a burn that has nothing to do with his shoulder, and the night comes back in a clutch of dismay and a tug of shame and desire. The fire is dead. They should put moss over it, though, just to be sure. He stands, kicks some of the surrounding green over the charred circle, and looks for Dean. He’s at the other end of the clearing, shaking pine needles out of the blanket. His eyes meet Sam’s, then slide away. Sam picks up the canteen and walks over to put it in the pack. He bumps his shoulder awkwardly against Dean’s, and Dean freezes, almost flinches. He gives the blanket a last shake, and starts to fold it.

“Last night,” he says abruptly, not looking at Sam. His hands pause for a moment, then go back to what they were doing, matching the blanket’s corners precisely, the way he never does. “Won’t happen again. I get it, OK? Up here, stuff got crazy. Down there there’s other things. Dad, the demon. Your life. You got a right to that, to the things you want. Not some weird shit with your brother.” The line of his shoulders eases, now he’s said his piece, and he looks up to inspect Sam’s face. “How’s the shoulder?” he asks. Case closed, new conversation.

“That’s what you’ve got, incident dismissed, how’s the shoulder?” asks Sam, and he’s angry, even if he’s got no right to be. He started it, dragged Dean past the point he might have forgiven himself. Left him to get up early, clean up the mess of their camp, write himself tidily out of the equation and make decisions for Sam’s good. “Dean, we fucked last night. That’s a pretty big elephant in the room.” Let alone the car. This, driving around with them on hunts. Between them when they meet up with Dad again. What the fuck had he thought he’d been doing?

Dean’s flushed now, angry. “What do you want from me, Sam? You’re finishing up your business with us and leaving, you’ve made that plenty damn clear. You want to pass the time till we gank this demon fucking and then talking about it?”

Sam still has the scabbed scar from the Daeva on his cheek. Dean’s eyes are on it, an accusation.

And yeah, Sam’s leaving, getting out while it’s still imaginable. Leaving because Dean would let him, let Sam tear his arm out and walk off with it. Dean’s like a starfish, one of those things that defends itself by giving pieces away. Sam knows it like he knows his own part, how to be the selfish one, the one who clutches and walks off. He’d done it once, riding a high of hurt and guilty triumph and intoxicating momentum. He can’t afford to lose the illusion that he could do it again.

“Because this will be such great baggage for your little fantasy, driving round the country the rest of our lives with Dad,” he shoots back, because he can’t stop pushing. There’s a flare in Dean’s eyes at the mention of Dad, murderous or vulnerable, Sam can’t tell, he just feels the sick, exhilarating drop in his stomach that means they’re teetering on the edge. But Dean relaxes deliberately, turns away.

“I’m not coming between you and Bigfoot, Sammy,” he says, “Just because I’m better looking, doesn’t mean you two weren’t made for each other.” It’s a dismissal and a plea and the offer of a deal, and Sam’s not quite reckless enough to refuse it. He laughs shakily.

“Yeah,” he says, “Seriously. Don’t know what I was thinking.” And that much is true. Dean shrugs.

“Heights do stuff to your head,” he says.

“Dude, we’re in the White Mountains. We’re not attempting Everest without oxygen.”

“It was a metaphor, dumbass. I thought you liked that crap.”

“Figures of speech, Dean. Fancy.” Dean hits his good shoulder, and Sam shoves him back.

They walk to the head of the narrow trail and Dean gestures Sam in front of him. “You first, princess. You do any more falling, I don’t want you taking me down with you.” Like Sam’s buying that one and the bridge that comes with it. Twice in the trek down Sam stumbles over roots or rocks, thrown off balance by his immobilized shoulder, and both times Dean grabs him instantly, sets him perpendicular before he starts to fall. Changing everything won’t change that. Sam can feel Dean’s eyes on his shoulder blades all the way down.

It must be near ten by the time they emerge into the parking lot at the trail’s foot. The car is waiting for them, windshield blinding, leather hot in the strong morning sun. Sam’s grubby and sweaty, his stomach clenched with hunger and his shoulder complaining. He’d kill for coffee and a shower. Dean settles into the Impala like he always does, like he’s James Tiberius Kirk walking onto the bridge. Sam winces involuntarily as he sits, and Dean shoots him an indecipherable look, defiance and apology and a flash of heat. Sam angles himself against the window so he can watch his brother. There’s an undercurrent, a gravitational pull, threading through Zeppelin and the spin of the tires. Dean’s eyes are strictly on the road now. Doesn’t mean he’s not feeling it too.

It’s still true, there are other things Sam wants down here. Things he should go on wanting; better for both of them. Best keep it complicated. He can’t always be dangling off cliffs with Dean holding him up. But that night in the motel Dean lets Sam suck him down. Doesn’t even argue, just tilts his head back, moaning, hand tangled in Sam’s hair, thumb stroking the corner of Sam’s jaw while Sam swallows and swallows. Sea level, and on down. Each time the world slips a little more out of its groove, into place. Too late for either of them to let go.


End file.
